Twenty Predictions for 1997

by J. Orlin Grabbe

1. Randall Davis will justify using the resources of
MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to help out the
Clinton-Gore campaign with the statement that "Well,
I've always viewed Al Gore as this big LISP program
which is more horizontally than hierarchically organized,
and I thought that if we could hook him up to a hypermedia
server with communication structured by DARPA intelligent
agents, it would provide a semantic environment in which
he could learn to parse real sentences."

2. Bill Clinton will outlaw all private uses of encryption,
except by resident foreign nationals with whom he's dined at
the Hay Adams or had to coffee at the White House, or who have
given large donations to the DNC at events which they did not
attend.

3. Vince Foster will rise from the grave and haunt many
government agencies.

4. Software AG will complete the conversion of
the White House "Big Brother" data base to ADABASE
to run on one of the three White House mainframe
computers. The White House will then proudly
announce to the GAO that they've "now activated the
audit trail".

5. Al Gore will convert to Buddhism in what some
will cynically interpret as an attempt to justify
frequent attendance at temple money-laundering
activities, but his critics will be silenced when he
appears in Lafayette Park with a begging bowl.

6. The CIA will issue a report proving that the bunkers
at Mena airport were simple library depositories used to
store newspapers like the San Jose Mercury.

7. William Cohen will withdraw his nomination for
Secretary of Defense and write a best-selling novel
entitled A Farewell to Arms.

8. In a surprise move, Bill Clinton will appoint Anthony
Lake as Ambassador to Iran, and Lake will book the first
leg of his flight to Teheran on TWA.

9. Kenneth Starr will unseal indictments of Hillary
Rodham Clinton, and in another surprise move Bill Clinton
will bomb both Iraq and Iran, and Hillary will make another
$100,000 trading crude oil futures at the NYMEX.

10. James Carville will drag a hundred dollar bill through
a trailer park in Louisiana and a frenzied mob of big-haired
women will seize and castrate him, then crucify him upside
down with the hundred dollar bill in his mouth.

11. A Miami lawyer will go public with the names of Bill
Clinton's cocaine suppliers, and in yet one more surprise
move, Bill will appoint Dan Lasater head of the National
Security Council.

12. In congressional hearings on Information Warfare
threats, the Department of Defense will explain that
"polymorphic viruses" cause polymorphs.

13. Now that it has been publicly revealed through the
Freedom of Information Act that Systematics (Alltel
Information Services) had numerous NSA contracts, San
Francisco attorney Charles O. Morgan will publicly
apologize to all those he threatened to sue for making
that claim.

14. Montana Governor Marc Racicot will open a series of
"Drugs R Us" boutiques throughout Montana, and will apply
to the IRS for tax-exempt status.

15. Two people with initials "D.B." and "F.G." will explain
who Jackson Stephens is, what the term "rubber ducks" means,
and why one of them was recently seem meeting with Jonathan
Pollard spy-handler Rafi Eitan.

16. Israel will suffer a national scandal when Bibi
Netanyahu is pressured to return large campaign contributions
from the Russian mafia. But it will all be put to rest, when,
in a surprise move, Bibi invades Syria.

17. The year's smash music single will be "Hale-Bopp, She
Bop" recorded by a re-united Trashmen.

18. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin will be forced to go
on national TV and condemn the "irrational funk" depressing
stock prices.

19. FBI Agent David "Killer" Keller will retire to New
Zealand where the men are men and, when asked why the
neighborhood sheep are nervous, will blame it on "right-wing
militias and the Internet".

20. By the end of 1997, not one of these predictions will
have come to pass. Not one.